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What’s up with redistricting?

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We are Ohio’s leading nonpartisan redistricting advocates and experts.

Fair Districts is led by League of Women Voters of Ohio & Common Cause Ohio.

Our coalition includes: ACLU Ohio, Ohio Council of Churches, A. Philip Randolph Institute, Ohio Voter Rights Coalition, and more.

What is Fair Districts?

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What’s so bad about gerrymandering?
Didn’t we pass redistricting reforms already?
What were those reforms?
Where are we in the redistricting process?

- Ohio House and Senate maps
- US congressional maps

What can you do to help ensure fair maps?

Redistricting Update

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Ohio House & Ohio Senate Districts

33 Senators and 99 Representatives,

per the Ohio Constitution.

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Apportionment: Creating 435 roughly equal Congressional Districts

It’s official: Ohio has decreased from 16 to 15 Congressional Districts

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What is redistricting?

What is Redistricting?

Redrawing district lines every ten years to reestablish population equality.

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What is redistricting?

What is Redistricting?

Drawing district lines is an opportunity to grab power.

What is Gerrymandering?

(Cracking and Packing)

“Packed”

“Cracked”

It matters who draws the districts, and what--if any--are the rules. Those drawing the lines can “pack” or waste extra votes from their opponents into districts that they are forfeiting to the opposition (as in districts 3, 9, 11, and 13 in Ohio’s current map) -- or they can “crack” the opposition and put an insignificant number in each district (as D votes are put in district 12, for example) so that they will never win. Packing and cracking are mainstays of partisan gerrymandering.

In this example, districts could be drawn to give “perfect” representation, but look at what happens when cats or dogs control the process. If dogs draw the lines, they can “crack” the opposition and put a small number of cats in each district. This gives dogs 5 representatives and cats zero. If cats control the process, however, they can “pack” dogs into two districts, and end up winning a majority of districts even though they are in the minority.

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What is redistricting?

What is Redistricting?

What’s so bad about Gerrymandering?

What is Gerrymandering and when did it first start?

Creates “safe” districts and predictable election outcomes
Predictable outcomes create unresponsive elected officials
Gerrymandering creates disengaged voters
The primary become the important contest
Competitive primaries benefit extreme candidates
Extreme candidates who cannot compromise lead to dysfunctional government
Dysfunctional government serves no one: it becomes impossible to make progress on ANY issue of importance to constituents.

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Dividing Communities

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Keeping Communities Together

College campuses are another example of communities that can be divided by gerrymandering!

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Predictable Results

Ohio’s congressional delegation is unlike our actual voting population.

The party that holds the power to draw districts will draw districts so that they will win.

2012-2020 Congressional Elections

2012-2020 State House Elections

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YES! Ohioans voted to add new redistricting rules to the Ohio Constitution in 2015 (state legislative) and 2018 (congressional).
These reforms passed in all 88 counties, with >70% of the vote.
2021 was the first time for Ohio to draw voting districts using the new rules.

Didn’t we pass redistricting reforms already?

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Nesting: Each Ohio Senate district must consist of three contiguous Ohio House districts.

Anti-gerrymandering rule: No plan shall be drawn to favor or disfavor a political party.

Representational fairness: The statewide proportion of districts whose voters, based on statewide state and federal partisan general election results during the last ten years, favor each political party must correspond closely to the statewide preferences of the voters of Ohio.

What were those new rules?

General Assembly:

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Congressional Maps [break into at least 2 slides]

Districts must be compact and contiguous.
Rules for keeping counties, cities, and townships whole.
The worst excesses of gerrymandering reined in through

bipartisan mapmaking,
limits on splits,
transparency,
public participation.

New Rules for BOTH Ohio House/Senate & US Congressional Maps

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Hearings across the state where hundreds of Ohioans gave testimony.
Ohio House & Senate maps drawn by the Ohio Redistricting Commission and passed on a party-line vote 9/16/21.
Congressional map drawn by the General Assembly and passed 11/30/21.

How did the new process go?

All three maps were immediately challenged in lawsuits.

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The Horrors of Gerrymandering

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WE WON LEGISLATIVE!

Three lawsuits filed against General Assembly (legislative) maps.
On Jan. 12, the maps were struck down for the lack of representational fairness & extreme partisan gerrymandering.
New maps must be PROPORTIONAL: must match Ohio’s 54% R to 46% D split.
The Court gave the Commission 10 days to draw the next set of maps!

“We hold that the plan is invalid because the commission did not attempt to draw a plan that meets the proportionality standard in Article XI, Section 6(B).”

“We also conclude that the commission did not attempt to draw a plan that meets the standard in Section 6(A)—that no plan shall be drawn primarily to favor a political party.”

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WE WON CONGRESSIONAL!

1/14: The Ohio Supreme Court sends congressional maps back to be redrawn

“When the dealer stacks the deck in advance, the house usually wins."

“The General Assembly produced a plan that is infused with undue partisan bias and that is incomprehensibly more extremely biased than the 2011 plan that it replaced.”

“This plan defies correction on a simple district-by-district basis. We, therefore, see no recourse but to invalidate the entire congressional-district plan.”

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Ohio Senate and Ohio House Maps Timeline

The Ohio Redistricting Commission has so far passed THREE SETS of state legislative maps.

1st set: Passed 9/16/2021; Challenged 9/23/2021; Struck down 1/12/2022

2nd set: Passed 1/22/2022; Challenged 1/25/2022; Struck down 2/7/2022

3rd set: Passed 2/24/2022; Challenged 2/28/2022; Struck down 3/16/2022

4th set: Drawing to be in process soon with court ordered mediators and

“independent” map drawers

All three sets of state legislative maps passed by the ORC have a disproportionate number of “toss-up” seats in the D column.

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Congressional Map Timeline

The Ohio Redistricting Commission and Ohio Legislature have so far passed TWO congressional maps.

1st set: Signed by Gov 11/20/2021; Challenged 11/30/2021;

Struck down 1/14/2022

2nd set: Passed 1/22/2022; Challenged 1/25/2022; OSC Decision 3/18/2022**,

3/21/22 NCAF filed a new lawsuit

**The Ohio Supreme Court issued a decision saying they could not invalidate the second congressional redistricting the OSC did not retain jurisdiction over the map-drawing process. A new and separate lawsuit would have to be submitted against the second map.

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…and thrown out by the Ohio Supreme Court.

WE WON LEGISLATIVE, AGAIN!

Ohio House & Senate maps must be redrawn!

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Second Ohio Supreme Court decision on state legislative maps

"...the map drawers & the commission knew that their approach—starting w the invalidated map & switching competitive GOP-leaning districts to competitive Dem-leaning districts—would have the dual effect of eliminating weak GOP districts & creating weak Dem districts.”

"We clearly invalidated the entire original plan.... The commission’s choice to nevertheless start with that plan and change it as little as possible is tantamount to an intent to preserve as much partisan favoritism as could be salvaged from the invalidated plan."

"[T]he commission members are all public servants...and they are entrusted with the solemn duty to draw a district plan that complies with the requirements of Article XI. They are charged with drawing a plan that inures to the benefit of not just one political party, not just one constituency, but of Ohio as a whole..."

"Bluntly, the commission’s labeling of a district with a Democratic vote share between 50 and 51 percent (in one case, a district having a 50.03 percent vote share) as “Democratic-leaning” is absurd on its face."

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Dates and Deadlines coming up

1st Congressional map passed by the General Assembly 11/18/2021

Challenged 11/30/2021; Struck down 1/14/2022
2nd map passed 3/2/2022 by the Ohio Redistricting Commission
Challenged 3/4/2022
WOSU article by Andy Chow, 3/7/22
No holds barred commentary by David DeWitt, 3/3/22

Congressional Map

Deadline for the GA to redraw was Feb. 13, but they gave up.
The Ohio Redistricting Commission has 30 days from Feb 14.
No meetings or hearings set
Fair Districts put forward a model congressional map on Feb 3.
Ohio Democrats released a new congressional map Feb. 8.

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Save time: Use our Model map!

Handout
Press release
Model congressional map in Dave's Redistricting App
Model congressional map narrative,
Slides,
Recording from the press conference
Tell the Commission to use our Model Maps!

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What’s up with the primary?

Howard Wilkinson: “And the Republicans in the Statehouse are so out of touch with reality that they believe the Ohio Supreme Court created the mess. ...if you are looking for the responsible parties you need look no further than the commission's five Republicans — Gov. Mike DeWine, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, State Auditor Keith Faber, Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp and Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman.”

SCO: "The General Assembly established the date of the primary election…, and it has the authority to ease the pressure that the commission’s failure to adopt a constitutional redistricting plan has placed on the secretary of state and on county boards of elections by moving the primary election, should that action become necessary."

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Fixing the process

Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor wrote:

{¶ 147} Having now seen firsthand that the current Ohio Redistricting Commission —comprised of statewide elected officials and partisan legislators — is seemingly unwilling to put aside partisan concerns as directed by the people’s vote, Ohioans may opt to pursue further constitutional amendment to replace the current commission with a truly independent, nonpartisan commission that more effectively distances the redistricting process from partisan politics.

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Looking to the Ohio Supreme Court. In 2019, the majority of the US Supreme Court in Rucho v. Common Cause determined that partisan gerrymandering does not fall under the jurisdiction of the federal courts. “For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities,” Justice Kagan said in her disent “And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives.” However, both state legislative and congressional maps can be challenged in the Ohio Supreme Court. Ohio is in much better shape than states like Wisconsin that doesn’t have rules keeping communities together and rules creating more transparent mapmaking.

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Tell your Ohio Representative and Senator to adopt our model map
Sign up for Fair Districts emails
Sign up for Common Cause Ohio emails
Follow us on Twitter: @CommonCauseOhio @OhFairDistricts @lwvohio @acluohio @ChurchesOhio and Ohio Statehouse press corps
Write letters to the editor
Testify at public hearings
Submit a comment to the Ohio Redistricting Commission
Donate to Fair Districts (and coalition orgs)

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Twitter: @OhFairDistricts

Visit us: fairdistrictsohio.org

Get in touch: fairdistrictsohio2021@gmail.com

Thank you for attending!